Alice Nielsen
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Alice Nielsen, born in Nashville, bred in Missouri, was a star for Victor Herbert on Broadway before she moved into opera. Her father Rasmus was a Danish troubadour, her mother Sara Kilroy was an Irish musician whose family came from Donegal. Rasmus and Sara met in South Bend, Indiana where Sara was studying music at St. Mary's.
Rasmus was injured in the Civil War outside Atlanta. The couple moved to Nashville where Alice was born about 1872 as the 7th of 8 children. The Nielsens moved to Warrensburg, Mo. when Alice was two. Rasmus died four years later, and Sara moved to Kansas City with four surviving children. Alice Nielsen roamed downtown as a child, singing to every person she saw. Outside the Kansas City club, she was heard by a wealthy meat packer and invited to his daughter's birthday party. At the Jacob Dold mansion, Alice sang dozens of songs. She became famous. Kansas City sent her to Washington to sing at the White House. Next she was hired to sing Gilbert and Sullivan in a juvenile company. When the summer was over, she joined the choir at Old St. Patrick's. At sixteen, Nielsen was a soloist, sang at weddings, performed the lead in local musicals. She married the church organist and had a son Benjamin. Leaving the abusive marriage, Nielsen followed the vaudeville circuit to San Francisco. There she sang in church, at an Irish tavern and soon joined the Tivoli Opera Company where she played 150 roles in two years. In 1896 Nielsen was hired by a super-group, The Bostonians, who took her to New York. In New York Nielsen became a Broadway star in Victor Herbert's The Serenade. Forming a company with Herbert, Nielsen toured North America for three years before reaching London in 1901 in The Fortune Teller. Pushed by business conflicts, Nielsen abandoned her Company and left to learn opera in Italy. She returned to London with Caruso and Scotti for a season of opera at Covent Garden in 1904. Their La Boheme was regarded as a masterpiece of ensemble performance. In the summer of 1905 Nielsen opened the Shubert's Waldorf Theatre with Eleonora Duse in a joint program of related opera and drama. One night Duse would act Camille, the next night Nielsen woud sing Traviata. That fall Nielsen returned to America, touring in opera. She added Nordica and Constantino to her company. They made a winter season of opera in New Orleans for two years. After a week of Boston concerts, Eben Jordan offered to build the Boston Opera House for Alice Nielsen and her Company. The plan was quickly realized.
In 1908 Boston Opera House opened, the finest in America. Joseph Urban came to America as art director. The Pavlova ballet company joined. Then Boston Opera folded amid the turmoil of World War One. The building fell into the hands of the Shuberts and it was torn down eventually. It was the same size as the present Boston symphony hall, and designed by the same architect.
Nielsen continued her career at Boston's sister company, The Metropolitan Opera. She was a popular recording artist in sessions conducted by Arthur Pryor, an old friend from St. Joseph, Missouri. Her concert tours were also popular. Nielsen was the highest-paid singer on the Chautauqua circuit, traveling in a private train car with entourage and dog. She sang in joint concerts with John McCormack and others. Nielsen was an expert in sustained, narrative song. "I only sang the songs I wanted to sing," she stated. She was a force in new methods of theatre. Victor Herbert wrote four shows for her. After a brief return to Broadway in 1917's Belasco-inspired "Kitty Darlin'," with lyrics by P.G. Wodehouse who was fired three weeks before opening, Nielsen married NYC surgeon LeRoy Stoddard. She stopped touring, yet continued concerts until shortly before her death in 1943.
Eleonora Duse— "Her voice makes one dream and forget the realities of life."
[[San Francisco Chronicle]]— She is chic and vivacious and filled with indefinable magnetism.
NY World— At the present moment she has no rival in her field.
Evening World— America's greatest lyrical soprano.
Post— Miss Nielsen is thoroughly a great singer, and showed clearly that she has attained the high place she holds in the musical world through sheer merit.
Musical Courier— It is difficult to imagine a more perfect Mimi than Miss Nielsen, who sings with a lovely lyric beauty of a voice that has not its counterpart anywhere.[1][2]
